DANGER…DANGER…STIMULUS SCAM… $827,000,000,000.00…it’ your tax dollars and debt…debt our children and grandchildren will be paying back for generations. Government is completely out of control and spending billions more than we take in. Billions each and every day!

This is a government-induced problem, where bad public policy encouraged easy credit and now you and I are getting stuck with the bill. See my commentary of Detroit TV.

MCCAIN ON SUNDAY TALK…I watched with anticipation and then excitement as Senator John McCain took on the Stimulus Package and pointed out that this was much more than infra-structure spending that would create any jobs. This was about changing public policy, creating new government programs, and significantly growing the deficit. The fiscal hawk was back! Thanks John McCain!

MRP STATE CONVENTION…Just a quick note to let you know that the Michigan Republican’s website has been updated with State Convention information. For your reference in directing potential delegates to the site, the address is: http://www.migop.org/event.asp.

CPAC 2009 Timeless Principles, New Challenges…Register today for the largest gathering of conservative grassroots activists in the country! The American Conservative Union Foundation is pleased to invite you to participate in the nation’s largest annual gathering of conservatives. The 36th Annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will be held on February 26-28, 2009.

RNC TECH SUMMIT…Chairman Michael Steele has asked me to head up the transition Team’s effort on bringing new technologies and tactics to the RNC. We are in the process or reviewing and analyzing the current operation. We also called for a Tech Summit where we are bringing interested parties together to share ideas, make suggestions and present their perspectives of what and how we could do more. If you’re interested, join us. For more details goto: http://net.gop.com/TechSummit/

CARD CHECK…Protect the workers’ right to a secret ballot. The vast majority (around 81%) of Americans believe that American workers have a right to have a secret ballot election before they are forced to join a union. Last year the House Democrats passed a bill that would strip American workers of the secret ballot. A new bill should be introduced reaffirming that right, and it should be brought up again and again until marginal Democrats are forced to vote with the American people against the union power structure. This, coming from a Teamster.

DANGER…THE STIMULUS SCAM…we can NOT spend, borrow and fake our way out of this government produced crisis. Government encouraged over spending, easy credit, and government directed social engineering that backfired. It’s BILLIONS of DOLLARS a day that Obama and the Democrats are borrowing that our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay back. Where is the fiscal discipline? Where is the fiscal responsibility? As our boy scout motto says "Be Prepared".

Mike Allen in POLITICO pointed out that Newsweek editor Jon Meacham: ‘Without a great deal of fanfare, the America of 2009 has become a more socialist country … Harvard economist Ken Rogoff predicts the United States will move toward ‘a more centralized, re-distributional health-care system, as Europe already has,’ with a greater emphasis on the environment, higher regulation, and increased protectionism. Rogoff’s conclusion: ‘I take the 2008 U.S. elections as marking a turn toward continental Europe.’ Meacham and Evan Thomas, in their ‘violin’ introducing the cover package: ‘History has a sense of humor, for the man who laid the foundations for the world Obama now rules is George W. Bush, who moved to bail out the financial sector last autumn with $700 billion. Bush brought the Age of Reagan to a close; now Obama has gone further, reversing Bill Clinton’s end of big government.’

Hillsdale Economics Professor Gary Wolfram has said…Common sense tells us that our problem is not that consumers are not spending enough. As John Taylor, Stanford University economics professor wrote in a recent NBER paper, we are in the recession because of government actions that artificially expanded credit resulting in people buying houses and consumer durables that they couldn’t afford. As a consequence, the market is now correcting and resources, including labor, are moving out of the housing construction and consumer durable (such as auto) industries.

There are only three ways to fund the $827 billion-cut other spending, increase taxes, or borrow. Clearly the government’s intent is to borrow the money, and this will cause a drag on the economy rather than improve it.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that only 20.8 percent of the spending in the Senate substitute will occur in this fiscal year and another 38% in the 2010 fiscal year.

President Obama has started to play the "catastrophe" card to sell his economic stimulus plan, using yesterday’s terrible January jobs report to predict doom unless Congress acts. No doubt he’ll get his way, but the tragedy of this first great effort of the Obama Presidency is what a lost opportunity it is.

Everyone agrees that some kind of fiscal stimulus might help the economy, and that running budget deficits is appropriate in a recession. The stage was thus set for the popular President to forge a bipartisan consensus that combined ideas from both parties. A major cut in the corporate tax favored by Republicans could have been added to Democratic public works spending for a quick political triumph that might have done at least some economic good.

Instead, Mr. Obama chose to let House Democrats write the bill, and they did what comes naturally: They cleaned out their intellectual cupboards and wrote a bill that is 90% social policy, and 10% economic policy. (See here for a case study.) It is designed to support incomes with transfer payments, rather than grow incomes through job creation.

WASHINGTON (AP) – One of President Obama’s top economic advisers forecast Sunday a difficult struggle with Congress over Senate cuts of $40 billion for state and local governments from the administration’s massive spending and tax cut package to stimulate the failing economy.

The $827 billion Senate version of the plan – designed to bring the economy out of the worst downward spiral since the Great Depression – was expected to pass the Senate on Tuesday. The House had already passed its $819 billion version of the measure.

Research shows the failure to rescue Lehman did not trigger the fall panic.

By JOHN B. TAYLOR

Many are calling for a 9/11-type commission to investigate the financial crisis. Any such investigation should not rule out government itself as a major culprit. My research shows that government actions and interventions — not any inherent failure or instability of the private economy — caused, prolonged and dramatically worsened the crisis.

The classic explanation of financial crises is that they are caused by excesses — frequently monetary excesses — which lead to a boom and an inevitable bust. This crisis was no different: A housing boom followed by a bust led to defaults, the implosion of mortgages and mortgage-related securities at financial institutions, and resulting financial turmoil.

Monetary excesses were the main cause of the boom. The Fed held its target interest rate, especially in 2003-2005, well below known monetary guidelines that say what good policy should be based on historical experience. Keeping interest rates on the track that worked well in the past two decades, rather than keeping rates so low, would have prevented the boom and the bust. Researchers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have provided corroborating evidence from other countries: The greater the degree of monetary excess in a country, the larger was the housing boom.

Here is all I know : As the swirl of hundreds and hundreds of billions of our dollars seem to be on the verge of making their way from our wallets and government printing presses into a variety of projects that appear to be spinning out of control and veering way off the path of what might be considered something that would kick start, or stimulate the economy, I am certainly happy about one thing…

After a rocky start, the new President knows he has to seize back the political agenda, says Toby Harnden.

By Toby Harnden

6:47PM GMT 08 Feb 2009

During last year’s epic election campaign, Hillary Clinton said that in the White House "there is no time for on-the-job training". Joe Biden, too, remarked that the presidency was "not something that lends itself to on-the-job training". Both were aiming barbs at their then primary opponent. Mrs Clinton has since brought what she would refer to as her "lifetime of experience" to the role of Secretary of State, while Mr Biden has traded 36 years in the Senate for the vice-presidency. And the rookie they derided is President.

Now, the words of his former rivals are returning to haunt President Obama. After a distinctly rocky start to his presidency, he has admitted he "screwed up" and is returning to one thing in his political career that he has perfected – campaigning. In Elkhart, Indiana, today and Fort Myers, Florida, tomorrow, Mr Obama will try to seize back control of the political agenda with question-and-answer sessions with voters in two of the swing states that gave him victory.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm, not noted for bold strokes, had an array of them in her State of the State Address last week, including a call to reduce the number of departments from 18 to eight.

Such Republicans as State Chairman Saul Anuzis and Attorney General Mike Cox, likely 2010 contender for her open seat, welcomed Granholm’s nod to government-shrinking/living within means. But — standard for the opposition party in SOS reaction — they lamented lack of details, some of which will come in the budget.

I have read the State of the State messages of every governor since Stevens T. Mason at age 25 presided over admission to statehood as the national Panic of 1837 was building and Michigan headed for its first economic fall. Granholm’s ranks high as well-crafted, and, among addresses I have watched, well-delivered.

LANSING, Mich. — Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith cast the only negative vote last week when the Michigan House asked a state commission to recommend reducing salaries for lawmakers and the state’s top elected officials.

She says the pay cuts can’t occur unless the Michigan Constitution is amended. But the House didn’t try to change the constitution. Instead, it passed a resolution and sent out news releases trumpeting what Smith says were legislators’ "meaningless" efforts to cut their pay.

Its rapid economic revolution gave rise to an influential global presence, but how long can America look past China’s suppressive human rights policies?

TOM WATKINS

What has transpired in China in its 5,000-year history is amazing. The last 30 years have been both remarkable and universally acknowledged.

There once was a time when what happened in China had minimal impact on our lives. Those days are gone.

What now happens in China no longer just stays in China. We not only feel the ripple effects; the tsunami wave of change will continue to wash upon our shores as the 21st century unfolds. How we adapt to and lead the changes that are coming will define our state and nation.

While the Obama administration struggles with the economic crisis at home, it has another major challenge on its hands abroad: Afghanistan. The growing Taliban insurgency there was the focus at an international security conference in Munich, Germany, on Sunday.

IT HASN’T been easy for foreign governments to command the attention of the Obama administration in its opening days, but North Korea is doing its best. Last week, the secretive Stalinist regime was spotted transporting what looked like a Taepodong-2 missile toward a launch site. In theory, the rocket has a range of more than 4,000 miles, which would allow it to reach Alaska. In trotting it out, Pyongyang is transparently threatening to violate U.N. resolutions by conducting its first flight test since 2006. This follows a steadily escalating series of provocations by the North toward South Korea, including the repudiation of past non-aggression agreements and a threat of "all-out confrontation."

The attention-getting behavior may look infantile, but from the North’s point of view it is quite logical. Time and again in the past decade, dictator Kim Jong Il has manufactured a crisis by testing missiles or a nuclear weapon, taking steps to produce bomb-grade plutonium, or expelling international inspectors. In most instances he has been rewarded with diplomatic attention and bribes of food and energy from South Korea, the United States, China and other nations, in exchange for reversing or freezing the actions. The Bush administration took office eight years ago declaring it would not condone such payoffs. It meekly ended, in October, by bribing Mr. Kim to reverse steps toward resuming plutonium reprocessing.